Landscapes Created and Found

We encounter with baffling images in the Mai Manó House’s old-new exhibit. At first glance: forestry, a field, beaches, cliffs, a tent in the jungle tent, rope-bridge over a canyon. At a second glance: where are these known and unknown landscapes? At a third look: do I see it well? Yes, you do. Tiny mock-ups visualize the landscapes, making an attempt at smuggling a new dimension into the usual locations. The opted for a creative method that makes us believe: not only can a sight be captured, but it can also be created and built. The individual’s creativity may be enforced against banal travel habits and dump of tourist images. This brings about a new experience and can create a relationship between the constructed landscape and the one who discovered, created it.
The exhibit was previously seen in Dorottya Gallery and at the Collegium Hungaricum in Vienna. Our exhibition, along with these original works, also shows more recent images that have been found by the artists Tibor Gyenis and Barna Illés separately. Collaboration supposes a similar way of thinking; yet, what is only an assumption in the case of the created landscapes, it becomes an actual certainty through the images the artists found on their own separate ways.

At the Viennese exhibit opening I told the following story:
Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived two brothers. They loved each other very much and both became excellent photographers. When they grew up, one of them tacked on his camera and told their father: “I set out to Big Reality, and I won’t stop until I find that place that is the most beautiful in the world. I will take a picture of it and I will bring it back to my father’s delight.”
And so he did. He left, took the photo, and brought it home.
The other brother said: “I stay home, I lock myself in my room, and I’ll make the most beautiful picture for my father.” And so it happened. This picture was also completed.
One said proudly: “I found the most magnificent reality and took a picture of it.”
The other one said: “I took this picture. This is reality.”
And they both were very happy and lived happily ever after.
And there is no particular lesson to be learned.

This tale is being continued in this exhibition with interchanging roles as both had stayed home, both had left, and they had taken pictures in both situations. The lesson, however, is the same.

Károly Kincses, curator